Truemors
By Patty Davis
for the West Coast Midnight Run
September 27, 2008
Yesterday I was sitting in bed watching the hugely popular flick of the early 70s, The Exorcist and this morning I got to leaf through the headlines on the internet and Paul Newman is front page news.
Paul Newman just passed away and for many, despite having enjoyed a long and productive life, many will mourn his loss, perhaps not him personally for they may have barely known him as an individual, but his image, his persona, the character and qualities he wore onscreen and on the stage, what the Paul Newman name stood for, what little is known about his personal dealings and the manner in which he and his family handled adversity and setbacks in the public limelight. Perhaps though in retrospection many of these folks are mourning his generation and its passing, the level of integrity they possessed and the moral discipline they displayed. The level of conservatism, even though an individual such as Mr. Newman is liberal, may prompt many to paint any other person with similar qualities as a “radical” in certain circles, meaning he is a “terrorist” to the new fads and the new world order, an anachronism, a relic that clashes with today’s mores and the newly minted standards for success. Two-day we live in an age where No says No and not “psst, I know of No” or “maybe, perhaps, we should think it over, let’s cut some kinda deal”. Individuals such as Mr. Newman saw their careers bloom at times of high instability, during the peak of social revolutions, from the shedding of moral decency and the affirmation of sexual liberties, group sex behaviour, the popularity and “cool” in the use of drugs and the flaunting of one’s own social standards, the birth of social defiance not just for making a statement or making social change but for ratings and media spectacles. But in remembering individuals such as Mr. Newman, most forget that such individuals were part of communities, circles of influence, support groups and networks. Perhaps Mr. Newman did not make any special efforts on his own to be this person of integrity. It’s possible he was merely a product of his generation and perhaps he was morally more “flexible” than most but we will never know for an individual such as Mr. Newman would have protected his personal life jealously and the public would never be privy to the actual dilemmas he faced, only those permitted to leak to the public via his press agent, his publicist and his manager. However to those feeling the loss, it is only an indictment of the current times we live in. That we should feel that someone of certain high qualities and ideals or some individual who personified or projected to the public these high ideals may have been taken from us is only a reflection on the current depravity or perhaps I should say the current “gravy-tasse” we are digging in, the new high ideals we have risen to, the new levels of accomplishments we have attained recently and the new pedestals on the ladder of human and social evolution that we have climbed to.Copyrighted 2008 Citadel Consulting Group LLC for the West Coast Midnight Run.
Mr. Gomez, the Editor of the West Coast Midnight Run would like to comment that a full length tribute to Mr. Newman as well as an opposing editorial will be forthcoming on the pages of the magazine. For now we can only express our condolensces to family and friends.
Look into the annual D'ark Night Film Festival and For Whom the Belles Toll, a documentary news film
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